As Quebec Premier François Legault seeks an energy deal with Newfoundland and Labrador, some say he faces a public hardened and scarred by the legacy of one dam failure after another. Legault responds during question period, Thursday, Feb. 16, 2023, at the legislature in Quebec City. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jacques Boissinot
ST. JOHN’S, N.L. – Quebec Premier François Legault is in St. John’s today for discussions with Newfoundland and Labrador’s premier about what will come after a bitterly divisive hydroelectric energy deal ends in 2041.
Legault faces a Newfoundland and Labrador public scarred by the legacy of two hydroelectric projects considered to be failures for the Atlantic province.
Jeff Webb, a historian at Memorial University, says the hostility from the 1969 Churchill Falls arrangement with Quebec led many in Newfoundland and Labrador to embrace the Muskrat Falls hydroelectricity project decades later.
Both, so far, have been disastrous for Newfoundland and Labrador: the Churchill Falls agreement overwhelmingly benefits Quebec while the Muskrat Falls project is delayed and draining the provincial purse.
Webb says when Muskrat Falls was sanctioned in 2012, it had been developed as a way for Newfoundland and Labrador to cut Quebec’s hydro utility out of its energy future and take care of its own needs.
Under the Churchill Falls deal, Hydro-Québec can purchase 85 per cent of the power generated at the Labrador dam at a fixed rate of just 0.2 cents per kilowatt hour.
On Wednesday, Legault said Quebec was open to paying more for the electricity generated from Churchill Falls — before 2041 — in exchange for a “very advantageous” price for power when the existing agreement ends in 18 years.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 24, 2023.
